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A mediocre French author writes mediocre poems about spring and love. But even though his beloved is a prostitute, his literary kisses are rather chaste.

In the 17th century, Amsterdam was Europe’s number-one city for scientific research. One of the city’s great minds was the brilliant physician Gerhard Blasius, one of the co-founders of comparative anatomy. And, typically enough, his last book was a handbook of animal anatomy.

There is no war that shaped Germany more than the conflict between the emperor and the empire that went down in history as the Thirty Years’ War. The fact that Germany is a federal republic now can be traced back to this war – and to the peace that put an end to it.

Sometimes the world changes for the better, at least a little bit. This happens whenever brave people realise that only because something has been done for centuries doesn’t make it right. But how is it possible to make a lasting change?

Centuries-old prejudices against Islam were softened when a French diplomat translated the Quran into his native language in 1647. Soon, many European intellectuals were studying the text. They learned that the faith that had been demonized for so long was on a par with Christianity – a revelation that was a milestone for the Enlightenment. But why was a French diplomat, of all people, the first to translate the Quran into a modern language?